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Comment by notacop31337 | Hacker News Reader

I made this comment to a friend recently that I don't think enough people are considering that he might actually be mad enough to have spent $44B to destroy a toxic business.

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The hole in that theory is that by all appearances, Elon Musk really, really likes using Twitter. I don't think he wants to kill it. I think the madness is two-fold:

(1) he approached this with a "pfft, I could run that business better than the bozos in charge" attitude -- it's not as if Twitter has been known for great management up to this point, right? -- but never actually came up with a plan beyond "not what they've been doing." After he initially made the offer, he spent all the time he should have been formulating business plans trying to get out of the deal instead. Then it got forced on him, and he's had to scramble.

(2) Elon has millions of people who treat him as a combination of Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, and Tony Stark, and bluntly, I think he's started believing his own press to the point where he just figures, "Why, yes, I am a super genius who can do anything, and anyone who contradicts me is clearly not worth listening to."

I would be very surprised if Twitter recovers from what Elon Musk, Super Genius is doing to it; the question is whether Elon Musk is going to recover from it. The best case is that this will be his Steve Jobs Exiled From Apple moment; the worst case is that he becomes Howard Hughes.

> The best case is that this will be his Steve Jobs Exiled From Apple moment

Didn't Steve Jobs return to this company when it was bleeding money, cut 4000 employees as his first move and turned it into a cash cow ?

Despite recent stories making this claim, no, not exactly. The 4,100 jobs that were cut in 1997 -- 2,700 full-time and the rest contract and part-time -- came while Gil Amelio was still CEO, and there's a bit of revisionism in attributing it just to Steve Jobs having been brought on as an advisor. Apple had already laid off 2,800 people in 1996 and the cuts in 1997 were widely expected by analysts. They were made with Apple's existing executive team intact and were executed in a considered, directed fashion. I do not think anyone can make a credible claim that Musk's approach so far could be described as considered and directed.

That second point is something I think we see a lot in widely-praised successful people. I think this is also what lead George Lucas to make the Star Wars prequels on his own, instead of having others refine his characters, story and dialogue like he did with the originals.

I can't help but think about something I learned in school about the Roman Empire: when generals returned to Rome after a military conquest, they were paraded around the city on a chariot with everybody cheering him. But behind him on the chariot was someone constantly whispering in his ear: "You are only mortal". I think when everybody constantly heaps praise on you, it's tempting to start to believe that you are a god, a genius, or otherwise high above everybody else. Having people around you who keep you grounded is probably good for your sanity.

> destroy a toxic business

Twitter is more toxic under musk..

It's been barely a week he's at the helm and you came to that conclusion? I'm indifferent about Musk, but that's absurd.

It doesn't come from me, it comes from people who care about brand image.

Who are these people?

People like this guy https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921

No idea who that person is, why they're important and how this proves that Twitter became more toxic in just two weeks of Musk compared to 20 years of the previous management. Care to enlighten me?

That person is president and COO of MMA global, huge marketing firm, given the fact that he was in a call with Elon, along with that class of people regarding brand safety; he is an important person and his comments describe the situation. He mentioned that their concerns are brand safety and moderation, and that’s why people are pulling out.

For them to pull out it seems that associating with twitter harms their image, and that’s - according to them - related to moderation.

As for “proof” that twitter is more toxic;

> In the week leading up to Musk's acquisition, researchers said there were no more than 84 hostile tweets an hour on the platform. But from midnight on October 28 – the day Musk took ownership – to noon the next day, there were 4,778 hate-filled tweets. That accounts for more than 398 tweets an hour, about 4.7 times higher than the seven-day average leading up to that day. The potential reach for those tweets was more than 3 million, researchers found.

> Researchers also said there was an increase in negative sentiment, with more than 67% of the tweets sent after Musk's takeover having a negative tone.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-twitter-caused-measur...

What brand image? A bunch of random people posting ridiculous things one massive flame war?

See the parallel chain.

So much more toxic, 15 million people joined ...In a week.

Spending $44B to prevent the endless terrible hot takes of the Twitterati from polarizing the world to the point where the rest of his stash becomes worthless. I like it.

He's doing his own fair share of polarization too.

"Ukraine should just let Russia keep what they've got now, and agree to their demands and wrap this all up."

Right? They should led the blood bath continue until we're tossing nukes at each other!

Russia should just withdraw and stop invading its neighbours.

Would we do the same?

I would. But it's true, aggressors rarely listen to reason. They care about strength and about cost. The US didn't withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan because it was the right thing to do, but because it was too expensive and there wasn't anything to gain. Russia may also withdraw once it becomes undeniable to them that there's no winning this and it's too expensive to continue trying.

There's lots of people arguing for peace talks, and I'd love for that to work, but it won't work if Putin isn't interested in peace, and by all appearances, he isn't. He's made pretty clear that he isn't. The only alternative is to make is aggression unsuccessful.

Then the only alternative is nuclear war.

That's a bit extreme. I'd prefer something in between: stopping Putin but without escalating to nuclear war. Pretty much what's going on right now. It's not great, but it's the least bad option; preferable to nuclear war or genocide.

It is extreme. Remember the news about the 2 people killed in Poland from stray missile(s)? Commentators and the Ukraine Government were quick to assess this missle was launched by Russia while the USA investigated. Yesterday the news was that the USA found that the missile was not actually launched by Russia. But the west could have made hay about it and decided those two farmers that died would have been plenty justification for a nuclear war. Lots of ordinary people wanted it.

I prayed that, that outcome would not happen.

Letting Russia do whatever they want is arguably not a great strategy towards stopping proliferation, since it sends the message that you're free to do as you please if you have nukes.

That's a very funny spin to still make Elon look good in all this.

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